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AMD Releases Stream SDK For Linux

05-25-2008, 01:30 PM

Phoronix: AMD Releases Stream SDK For Linux

Earlier this month we announced that AMD would soon be releasing their Stream SDK for Linux, and just before the start of the weekend this inaugural release had occurred. The Linux release of the AMD Stream SDK v1.1 Beta brings both CAL and Brook+ for those using ATI/AMD graphics hardware. This v1.1 Beta release is also in tune with the new beta release for Microsoft Windows XP.

So, if I understand this correctly, what does this mean for games trying to use these GPGPU SDKs?
Two different SDKs means twice the work to use them and means pretty much incompatibility I guess. Ain't that good in my opinion....
However, at least they're both Linux compatible

Comment

So, if I understand this correctly, what does this mean for games trying to use these GPGPU SDKs?

Uhm, it is unlikely that games will use the GPGPU stuff at all. This is basically meant to help speed up "big calculation" like eg seti@home and stuff like this. In games the graphics card is needed for the graphics, there is not too much space free for anything else. And for physics calculations, better rely on the 2nd core of the CPU, this makes a lot more sense these days than requiring a 2nd graphics card for this stuff.

Comment

It indeed has. However, as I said if e.g. FFmpeg wants to take advantage of the Stream SDK or CUDA it will need doubled code effort to do so.
However, maybe someone will create a compatibility layer that provides a general GPGPU interface and uses the features that are available on a video card automatically (i.e. something like what wxWidgets is for Qt and GTK).

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Does the SDK work with HD2xxx/3xxx AGP cards as well? It should, I just haven't explicitly seen it said anywhere. I was thinking of one last upgrade.

Nvidia is going going to port PhysX and CUDA libraries to both CPUs and GPUs from interviews I've read, and they want Intel and ATI to pickup CUDA too. Fragmentation can't be good for the GPGPU market as a whole if all three manufacturers are going to have their own standards. Hopefully Nvidia will annouce their open-source strategy soon with this in mind.

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have you tried watching in the mirror? there's a misterios driver called ati_driver_8.49.4_lnx.zip instead of 8.49.3! have you tried to build and use it? building fails for me (using gcc-4.3 and kernel 2.6.25)